Thing That Used To Be A Different Thing

This is a Tim Hortons coffee shop, located on Lake Shore Blvd at 38th Street in Toronto. Before I start my day at my Toronto marketing agency 25bikes Media, I drive my daughters to school. And just around the corner from one of those schools, this giant coffee cup looms large.

It's a huge 3-D sign, and it is such a perfect thing to have outside a coffee shop. You might wonder why you don't see more of them in your coffee travels. The reason? This thing used to be a different thing.

I took the photo above in 2018. And here, is a screenshot from Google Maps Street View showing this store four years earlier, in 2014. Yes, it used to be a KFC.

We are all familiar with the gigantic chicken bucket signs that often adorned KFC locations. You can see that back in 2014, this tired KFC location was boarded up and still displayed old, faded "Kentucky Fried Chicken" branding.

But when it became a fresh new Tim Hortons a few years later, it made perfect sense to keep the bucket, and re-christen it as a jaunty cup of coffee. Luckily the bucket hadn't been demolished or vandalised!

Re-purposing signage that's in a distinct shape is usually a bad idea, because you can almost always tell what the sign used to be. But this is one time when it worked really well.

Photo credit 2018 Joe Middleton

Screenshot credit Google Maps Street View